new motherboard...

  • Thread starter Thread starter toedipper
  • Start date Start date
T

toedipper

Hello,

Installing new motherboard and cpu in xp machine.

All other hardware is the same. Can I just hook up my current hard
drive that has xp installed and switch on?

Cheers,

td.
 
toedipper said:
Hello,

Installing new motherboard and cpu in xp machine.

All other hardware is the same. Can I just hook up my current hard
drive that has xp installed and switch on?

Cheers,

td.
Click to expand...


Of course not! You cannot rip the guts out of a system and expect it to act
as though nothing has happened. You will need to perform a repair
installation at the very least (and this is assuming a self-built system
with a retail OEM, or a standard retail licence). If your system was
purchased with XP factory installed then, usually, the motherboard is
considered the machine and a change of motherboard will void the licence. In
this instance, your only choice would be to purchase a new licence.

I hope you backed up anything critical before installation because, in some
instances, a clean installation may be necessary.

I also have no idea why you're posting this here as there are plenty of
Windows XP groups available (microsoft.public.windowsxp. general would have
been a good place to start).

You will, obviously, need to reactivate.
 
toedipper said:
Hello,

Installing new motherboard and cpu in xp machine.

All other hardware is the same. Can I just hook up my current hard
drive that has xp installed and switch on?

Cheers,

td.
Click to expand...

DO NOT TRY TO BOOT WINDOWS WITH A NEW MOTHERBOARD.

It will cause problems. Many of them. As soon as you get the computer running,
you should to a repair install, assuming you have a real copy of windows, not an
OEM version. This should install all the proper motherboard drivers for the new
board, and remove the old one. No guarantees though, and you might end up
having to reformat the drive and do a clean install.
 
And then there are those that have swapped out a motherboard and cpu and done
nothing to windows and have it work just fine. XP is very forgiving comparied
to win9x OS's.
However that being said, you should do a repair, and if you can, hell do a
clean install, you'll know for sure then. But before you do anything make sure
all important data is backed up and either stored on a seperate drive or burned
to cds/dvds.
Go online and look up the procedure to do a repair in XP.

Good luck
~A
 
And then there are those that have swapped out a motherboard and cpu and done
nothing to windows and have it work just fine. XP is very forgiving comparied
to win9x OS's.
Click to expand...

Quite untrue.
Win9x is extremely easy to swap a motherboard on, there is NEVER
a case where Win9x must be reinstalled. WIthout question
WinNT/2K/XP are the far more difficult to swap motherboards and
get working properly again. By "far more difficult", i basically
mean that you must at least have correct IDE (boot drive) info so
OS can boot far enough to PNP the rest of the hardware.

However that being said, you should do a repair, and if you can, hell do a
clean install, you'll know for sure then. But before you do anything make sure
all important data is backed up and either stored on a seperate drive or burned
to cds/dvds.
Go online and look up the procedure to do a repair in XP.
Click to expand...

Agreed, backup is important. Another alternative is to have a
2nd partition that holds all important data, so that if a clean
install is required, the OS partition can be formatted without
any concern of data loss.
 
No. When you change the motherboard in an XP based computer you must
reformat the harddrive and then do a fresh install of the OS. This will
prevent ongoing nasty Registry errors.
 
DaveW said:
No. When you change the motherboard in an XP based computer you must
reformat the harddrive and then do a fresh install of the OS. This
will prevent ongoing nasty Registry errors.
Click to expand...


Formatting is (usually) quite unnecessary. A repair installation will work
fine. Obviously there might be some rare occasions when a format is
required, but not as a general rule.
 
Miss Perspicacia Tick said:
Formatting is (usually) quite unnecessary. A repair installation will work
fine. Obviously there might be some rare occasions when a format is
required, but not as a general rule.
Click to expand...

And many folks disagree... it's close to 50% of the time it doesn't work.

Personally, I've never seen a PC working 100% normally after a mainboard
swap until is was formatted/reloaded. They may work, but there are always
quirks and sometimes they don't show up for weeks, but they eventually do.

Bottom line is that you can't PLAN to do this without issues and you should
backup your information anyhow.
 
Back
Top